Reflections on George Brown
The nation lost a great friend of science last week with the passing of Rep. George E. Brown Jr. (D-California), Ranking Minority Member of the House Science Committee. Not only was Brown a strong advocate for federal R&D, he was also someone who attempted to look beyond the conventional wisdom and challenge traditional thinking about science and technology and their role in society. An industrial physicist by training, Rep. Brown was in his 18th term in the House of Representatives, and served two as Chairman of the Science Committee. One of his major initiatives as chairman was a study of the health of the U.S. research enterprise. He was one of the first politicians to articulate the view that the path from scientific discovery to technological innovation to commercial product is complex and non-linear, and to argue that this ought to be reflected in the nation’s science policy.
During his years in Congress, Rep. Brown was a force behind the establishment of OSTP, OTA, and EPA, advocated peaceful space exploration and international scientific collaboration, opposed earmarking of federal science funds, and promoted a host of environmental, energy, and technology issues. Although most prominently known in the science community for his work on S&T, Brown was an advocate of civil rights as far back as the 1930s, and opposed the Vietnam War in the 1960s. He was a tireless champion of social equity and challenged the science establishment to consider how technology could diminish, rather than increase, the gap between the haves and the have-nots. Below is an excerpt from a 1993 speech he gave to the AAAS Science and Technology Colloquium:
“For the past fifty years, this nation has focused its resources on building weapons of inconceivable destructive power, and we have viewed the rest of the world as a chessboard designed to play out our own ideological struggle. We propped up governments that murdered nuns, priests, nurses, and children, and we provided high-technology weaponry to dictatorships. We destabilized governments that were democratically elected, in some instances to protect the profits of U.S. companies. We turned a blind eye while our tactical allies acquired the components necessary to build nuclear weapons, and we condoned authoritarian governments in the name of the free flow of oil. Our vision during the Cold War was cynical in the extreme. ‘Mutual assured destruction’ was a U.S. philosophy of international relations; the ‘Peacekeeper’ was a ballistic missile that carried nuclear warheads.
“Now the Cold War is over, and our excuse for this behavior is gone. We need a new and better vision. I’m exploring ways to define that vision. I would be satisfied with small but definite steps in a new direction, but what direction? Neither technology nor economics can answer questions of values. Is our path into the future to be defined by the literally mindless process of technological evolution and economic expansion or by a conscious adoption of guiding moral precepts? Progress is meaningless if we don’t know where we’re going. Unless we try to visualize what is beyond the horizon, we will always occupy the same shore.”
Brown died on July 15 from an infection developed following heart valve replacement surgery in May. He was 79. He will be remembered as one who always challenged his colleagues and the American people to look beyond our horizons.
